Esperanto Braille

Braille alphabet of the Esperanto language

Esperanto Braille

Script type|

alphabet

Print basis

| Esperanto alphabet
Languages| Esperanto
Related scripts

Parent systems

Braille

* Esperanto Braille

Part of a series on

Esperanto flag Esperanto

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History

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Culture

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Organizations and services

* World Esperanto Congress
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By country

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Related topics

* Auxiliary language
* Constructed language
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* Homaranismo
* Linguistic discrimination

Wikimedia

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* Vikivojaĵo

* v
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The Esperanto language has a dedicated braille alphabet. One Esperanto braille magazine, Esperanta Ligilo, has been published since 1904, and another, Aŭroro, since 1920.

## Alphabet

[edit]

The basic braille alphabet is extended for the print letters with diacritics. The circumflex is marked by adding dot 6 (lower right) to the base letter: ⠩ ĉ, ⠻ ĝ, ⠳ ĥ, ⠺ ĵ, ⠮ ŝ. Therefore, the letter ĵ has the same form as the unused French/English Braille letter ⠺ w; to write a w in a foreign name, dot 3 is added: ⠾ w [1] (see next section). Esperanto ŭ is made by reflecting u, so that dot 1 becomes dot 4: ⠬ ŭ. The alphabet is thus as follows.[2]

a |
b |
c |
ĉ |
d |
e |

|
|
|
|
|
|

g |
ĝ |
h |
ĥ |
i |
j |

k |
l |
m |
n |
o |
p |

s |
ŝ |
t |
u |
ŭ |
v |

Contracted braille is in limited use.[3]

### Transcribing foreign letters

[edit]

Beside the basic-Latin foreign letters q, w, x, y, there are dedicated letters for the umlauted vowels that occur in print German, ä, ö, ü:

q |
w |
x |
y |
ä |
ö |

|
|
|
|
|
|

Additional accented letters in other languages are handled by separate braille cells for the diacritics. These do not have a one-to-one correspondence with print:

(and ő, ű
from ö, ü)  |
◌̀, ◌̄ |
◌̃ |
◌̂, ◌̌ |
◌̈, ◌̇ |
◌̊, ◌̆ |
◌̧, ◌̨, ◌̣, ◌̩  |
◌̸, ◌̵, etc.

|
|
|
|
|
|
|

These conventions are used for foreign names adapted to Esperanto Braille. Unassimilated text in another braille alphabet is indicated by the code ⠐⠂.

## Punctuation

[edit]

Single punctuation

(space) |
,  |
' (abbr.) |
.  |
?  |
!  |
;  |

|
|
|
|
|
|
|

*  |
/  |
...  |
\-  |

The apostrophe and abbreviation point are both transcribed ⠄, which is distinct from the period/stop, ⠲. A series of colons, ⠒⠒⠒, is a common dinkus for dividing sections of texts.

Paired punctuation
...
(outer quotes) | ...
(inner quotes)

|

...
( ... )  | ...
[ ... ]

Quotation marks in print Esperanto are highly variable, and tend to follow the conventions of the country a text is published in. This is irrelevant for printing in braille.

## Numbers

[edit]

The apostrophe/abbreviation point ⠄ is used to group digits within numbers, like the comma in English. In both print and braille Esperanto, the comma is used as the decimal mark, so:

print English 100,000.00
= print Esperanto 100 000,00
= braille ⠼⠁⠚⠚⠄⠚⠚⠚⠂⠚⠚.

## Formatting

[edit]

Capitals are only marked for proper names. They are not used at the beginning of a sentence.

(digit) |
(caps) |
(emph.) | .....
(span emphasis)

|
|
|

...
(alternative span emphasis) | ...
(foreign braille text)

For emphasis (bold or italics in print), a simple ⠸ is used to mark each of one to three words. For longer emphatic text, there are two formats: Either a colon precedes the simple emphatic sign, ⠒⠸, and an additional sign ⠸ is placed before the last emphasized word, or the sign ⠠⠄ is placed before and after the emphasized text.

In contracted (grade 2) braille, a different sign is used for capital letters, ⠠ (dot 6). As in most braille orthographies, proper names are not contracted, and words preceded by this sign are not contracted in Esperanto Braille.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Redirecting to Google Groups".
2. ^ "World Braille Usage". UNESCO. 2013. Archived from the original on 2014-09-08. Retrieved 2021-06-14.
3. ^ Esperanta stenografio, Nizhny Novgorod, 2003

## External links

[edit]

* Ligo internacia de blindaj esperantistoj

* v
* t
* e

Braille ⠃⠗⠁⠊⠇⠇⠑

Braille cell|

* 1829 braille
* International uniformity
* ASCII braille
* Unicode braille patterns

Braille scripts|

| French-ordered|

* Albanian
* Azerbaijani
* Cantonese
* Catalan
* Chinese (mainland Mandarin) (largely reassigned)
* Czech
* Dutch
* English (Unified English)
* Esperanto
* French
* German
* Ghanaian
* Guarani
* Hawaiian
* Hungarian
* Iñupiaq
* IPA
* Irish
* Italian
* Latvian
* Lithuanian
* Luxembourgish (extended to 8-dot)
* Maltese
* Māori
* Navajo
* Nigerian
* Philippine
* Polish
* Portuguese
* Romanian
* Samoan
* Slovak
* South African
* Spanish
* Taiwanese Mandarin (largely reassigned)
* Turkish
* Vietnamese
* Welsh
* Yugoslav
* Zambian

| Nordic family|

* Estonian
* Faroese
* Icelandic
* Scandinavian
* Danish
* Finnish
* Greenlandic
* Northern Sámi
* Norwegian
* Swedish

|

Russian lineage family
i.e. Cyrillic-mediated scripts|

* Belarusian
* Bulgarian
* Kazakh
* Kyrgyz
* Mongolian
* Russian
* Tatar
* Ukrainian

Egyptian lineage family
i.e. Arabic-mediated scripts|

* Arabic
* Persian
* Urdu (Pakistan)

Indian lineage family
i.e. Bharati Braille|

* Devanagari (Hindi / Marathi / Nepali)
* Bengali (Bangla / Assamese)
* Gujarati
* Kannada
* Malayalam
* Odia
* Punjabi
* Sinhala
* Tamil
* Telugu
* Urdu (India)

Other scripts|

* Amharic
* Armenian
* Burmese
* Dzongkha (Bhutanese)
* Georgian
* Greek
* Hebrew
* Inuktitut (reassigned vowels)
* Khmer
* Thai and Lao (Japanese vowels)
* Tibetan

Reordered|

* Algerian Braille (obsolete)

Frequency-based|

* American Braille (obsolete)

Independent|

* Chinese semi-syllabaries
* Cantonese
* Mainland Chinese Mandarin
* Taiwanese Mandarin
* Two-cell Chinese (Shuangpin)
* Japanese
* Korean

Eight-dot|

* Luxembourgish
* Kanji
* Gardner–Salinas braille codes (GS8)

Symbols in braille|

* Braille music
* Canadian currency marks
* Computer Braille Code
* Gardner–Salinas braille codes (science; GS8/GS6)
* International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
* Nemeth braille code

Braille technology|

* Braille e-book
* Braille embosser
* Braille translator
* Braille watch
* Mountbatten Brailler
* Optical braille recognition
* Perforation
* Perkins Brailler
* Refreshable braille display
* Slate and stylus
* Braigo

People|

* Louis Braille
* Charles Barbier
* Róża Czacka
* Valentin Haüy
* Harris Mowbray
* Thakur Vishva Narain Singh
* Sabriye Tenberken
* William Bell Wait

Organisations|

* Braille Institute of America
* Braille Without Borders
* Japan Braille Library
* National Braille Association
* Blindness organizations
* Schools for the blind
* American Printing House for the Blind

Other tactile alphabets|

* Decapoint
* Moon type
* New York Point
* Night writing
* Vibratese

Related topics|

* Accessible publishing
* Braille literacy
* RoboBraille

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